Video surfaces of James Cameron learning about 9/11 after visiting the Titanic inside a submersible vessel: 'The worst terrorist attack in history, Jim'

• James Cameron, director of "Titanic," is also a deep-sea diving expert.
• He told ABC News that he has visited the Titanic shipwreck 33 times in a submersible vessel.

A video of director James Cameron emerging from a visit to the Titanic shipwreck and learning about the 9/11 attacks resurfaced this week as the filmmaker received media attention for his perspective on the Titan submersible incident, which tragically ended in the death of all five of its passengers.

The filmmaker has visited the Titanic shipwreck, about 12,500 feet down in the North Atlantic Ocean, nearly three dozen times. In an interview with ABC News on Thursday, Cameron said he made 33 visits to the site in a submersible vessel.

Some of those visits were to prep for his Academy Award-winning 1997 film, "Titanic." But the director made multiple trips well after making the movie. One of those voyages occurred on the fateful day of September 11, 2001.

In the clip, Cameron can be seen climbing down from the submersible when the late actor Bill Paxton, who starred in "Titanic" and Cameron's subsequent documentary, "Ghosts of the Abyss," broke the news to the director.

"The worst terrorist attack in history, Jim," Paxton, wearing the brown jacket in the video, can be heard saying to a stunned Cameron.

Paxton then explains to the surrounding crew that there were two separate hijackings, referring to the planes that crashed into the World Trade Center.

Nearly 3,000 people died in the September 11 attacks.